All urban areas – whether in France, England or wherever – are growing more ominous, though they do vary in whether the menace is mostly just that or a prelude to violence. I should qualify by saying very touristy areas, say Central Oxford, are mostly ‘better’. But go to the central parts of Oxford that aren’t overrun with tourists and it’s increasingly a zone for drugs and the mentally ill, with boarded-up shops, street-boozers and gangs of Middle Eastern/Albanian blokes lurking in shop doors. The menace is palpable.
And not all historic cities are as good! There’s one which is astonishing given its fame, albeit a past with a grim aura: Richard III was, of course, Duke of Gloucester, and I believe in historical resonance. Edward II has a magnificent tomb, in the stunning cathedral; he was murdered by having a red-hot poker shoved up his backside.
I spent Bank Holiday Monday there; metaphorical link intended. It’s a truly awful city, seriously wrong in feel. The magnificent Gothic cathedral forms a bizarre oasis, approached down a charming alley but hemmed in by vape shops, dope smoking, drug dealing, injecting and feral kids on bikes. Very little else that’s medieval survives, in part due to its 19th-century industrial heritage.
Gloucester always was a weird place, but it’s now completely dystopian. The regenerated Quays area of old warehouses – full of designer shops, flats and restaurants – is vaguely pleasant, but doesn’t remotely compensate. Not least when some festival is blaring out that moronic political theme-tune to Tony Blair: ‘Things Can Only Get Better’.
Easy to see how the Wests operated unnoticed. Some of the locals look alarmingly similar to Fred and Rose: heaven knows what’s under their patios or in their cellars. To be fair, everyone I spoke with – I make a habit of random conversations in new places – was disarmingly cheerful, on how frightful the place was. A delightful woman said the council had simply knocked down almost anything worth preserving but were now pondering rebuilding it somehow…
The nearby Forest of Dean is like England’s Deep South and sits brooding, very close. Keir Smarmer wouldn’t dare set foot there; it would be like Deliverance for him! Imagine the prancing ninny dragged into some pub to discuss ‘what a woman is’ with the cheery locals.
I’d pay to witness it.
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Gloucester is an advert for how the state has fundamentally destroyed any entrepreneurialism in this country. Ppl simply expect the state to do everything, anything that isn’t the state is completely regulated.
The local town centres nearest to me have all suffered massively in the last twenty years.
Huddersfield once had a delightful centre with plenty of Independents. Now it is a grim place of boarded shops, charity outlets and fast food. Grim.
Ashton, Ranting’s home town is now devoid of character since the council burnt down the wonderful old market hall. Another town filled with cheap shops, charity outlets on every corner. Grim.
Rochdale, the grooming gangs HQ. Probably the worst. An absolute third world shit hole with pretensions to being a run-down suburb of Pakistan. A disgusting place but not disgusting enough that Ranting wants to help.
Oldham, my home town, King Cotton, birthplace of Platt Brothers who once employed over 15,000 people and sent their manufacturing to virtually every country in the world. Now we are a brother town to Rochdale, albeit with a massive but unresolved grooming gangs issue which Burnham keeps suppressing.
We once had what was known as the best outdoor market in the North of England alongside a quirky old market hall – burnt down. Our council showed Ashton how it was done. We have a massive immigrant population such that walking through the town centre it is difficult to believe you are in England. The tension is palpable.
All four towns have one thing in common – Labour councils although Labour no longer have total control in Oldham.
Clearly in order to “build back better” we first of all have to turn our towns in to squalid, immigrant dumps. I would say that project is proceeding very nicely.
Speaking of Huddersfield Hux, my abiding memory of the place was the ‘Amsterdam Bar’.(circa 1979). Kim Cordell’s ‘We’re Having a Gang Bang’ belting out at closing time. Bar staff who were expert lip-readers, (they had to be to take your order). Music, courtesy of a score of speakers thumping out 110dB to rattle your teeth. What a gas!
Yep even music has deteriorated in conjunction with everything else. In those days all music was live and musicians played instruments. Then along came the dreaded Karaoke Machine which is basically a digital sing song. Suddenly bar owners could get people in their pubs by paying a single person to operate the bloody thing and he could sack the 5 piece band. -It was all downhill for live music after that.
Your comment and mine are pretty much saying all of the same stuff. —–People in their 20’s and 30’s won’t know what we are talking about. ——Have a nice day.
I always wondered, would Gloucester be so bad if Cheltenham didn’t exist, or wasn’t quite so close?
Was at school near Tewkesbury & Gloucester. I remember being about twelve and was worried about bullying etc, and the staff member, big bloke from Hereford ex forces, said, well I get a bit nervous walking through Gloucester at night. That put things into perspective at the time. This was around 1990 because I remember the film ‘Ghost’ in the Cinema there.
Very hard to beat those magnificent cloisters though (as seen in Harry Potter).
Hmm, let me lob High Wycombe and Chesham into the pot. A combination of high muslim immigrant populations and retarded town planners is not a recipe for success….
If the west is in decline, why should out high streets etc be picture postcard material? I keep hearing people say “Save the High Street”. ——-But really what has happened is that a large proportion of the population now have cars, and even older people who don’t have cars will have a son, daughter or daughter in law who will take them shopping. But they are mostly not going to go to a Hight Street for that, unless it is to the chemist, bank, or Specsavers etc. They will go to large Shopping Malls where the large companies started emigrating to many years ago because there were hundreds of spaces for their customers cars. This left the High Streets like a shell of their former selves. Because these places were mostly built 100 years ago with not a lot of spaces for cars and 60, 70 years ago people would be getting the bus down to their Hight Streets and the bus back. So now Hight Streets are filled with charity shops, buskers, beggars, the old folk that have no means to get to out of town Shopping Malls, and the bedraggled class of people that sit in a pub all day on benefits and stand outside smoking a roll up. Not to mention the 30 migrants that stay in a flats above the old Safeway, wandering up and down all day with nowhere else to go.
Why is the west in decline?
Councils charging silly money for parking on or near the town centre is what has killed High streets everywhere. And why? Sheer greed and nothing more.
When Oldham was told it would be connected to the Manchester tram network I predicted then that it would kill the town centre and so it has proved. Why? Well an off peak return tram journey to Market Street, Manchester costs less than all day parking in Oldham. The only thing keeping Oldham centre alive is Primark, if they go the town centre will die. Who wants to shop in a dreary centre when Manchester is just 35 minutes away and you don’t even have to drive?
Living the other side of Manchester I can attest to the fact that towns like Altrincham and Northwich have gone the same way.
Chester is no longer worth a visit and Warrington has been hollowed out.
Only Knutsford seems to have retained any trace of character, where it is entertaining to sit in a restaurant and count the Ferraris passing by.
Still high property prices around Chester, that is the area where many footballers live.
I don’t think footballers and their wives bother with the shops in Chester.
Regarding property, it is one of the highest prices in England after London and Cornwall. Monmouthshire seems to be the highest property prices, along with Crickhowell in Wales.
Thanks
An update and an apology. I visited Warrington today and have to report that it looks good and appears prosperous. Parking is plentiful and sensibly priced, and the centre is buzzing.
So sorry to Warrington for being so rude.
In my defence is that the last time I visited was pre-Covid and immediately after the departure of M&S and Debenhams, and Times Square was a building site (now pristine).
We once thought of moving to the Forest of Dean…England’s Deep South perfectly describes this rather unsettling place. The wild boar trotting down the high street didn’t help the impression.
It brings to mind the phrase (spoken in a deep West Country accent – I can do that as my family are from there so it can’t be deemed cultural appropriation):
“All the world’s a little queer, save thee and me, and even thee’s a little strange.”
NB this is quote from Robert Owen – 1771 – 1858 so the word queer has its original meaning.
Why is it unsettling? It’s great.
Yes, I agree it is a great place. It’s just that I felt like I would be a “newcomer” for the rest of my life if I settled there. And the house we wanted to buy was too much money, too close to a noisy road, oh yes and it had a heat pump! Fussy folk eh?
A walk around any of the provincial towns in England is revealing of the threadbare state of the country.
These provincial towns once had their own character. Compare postcard photographs of the seaside resorts, especially those on the south coast, with what they look like today in the same season. Many of the once most lively, such as Ramsgate and Eastbourne, have ceased to be such resorts.
Walk around the town centres of such places and the signs of economic activity are poor. In some coastal towns almost one in three premises are some sort of eating place. Whereas in the 1960s there were a whole variety of shops.
In Ramsgate there are new high-end apartments on the promenade that have replaced the defunct huge 1930s lido. In contrast to these dwellings for the thin strata of the super-rich, the rest of the town centre has an air of an economic dead zone. In neighbouring Broadstairs the cuts have reached the flower beds; though not in the form of cutting the weeds.
In larger provincial towns, such as Croydon, while the skyline looks like Manhattan, when you get there you realise it’s Manhattan without the money. At least the locals don’t look as if they have much. Drug addicts aggressively beg for money. Stabbings near the station. Mad people wander about shouting at nobody. Moslem proselytising has taken place occasionally in the pedestrianised area. Yet Croydon hails as the Borough of Culture. (But which culture?).
In nearby Tooting on the last day of Ramadan this year, an assembly of the faithful gathered on the Common to chant prayers through a loudspeaker. So loud that it could be heard half a mile away.
Yet the greater and most revealing sign of the times can be seen in Worthing. The rusting and decrepit 1930s bandstand gives a ghostly premonition even on a sunny day of a past confidence. But for a vision of what was and is not, stand before the fabulous Great War memorial that was confidently relocated outside the 1930s town hall when it was built. The vision becomes palpable when the life that goes on around it is compared with the dedication to the hundreds named and the jaunty life-size figure atop the column. Our diminution an offence to the Glorious Dead.
A lovely post.
Awesome. Some nutter downvoted a three word comment.
Maybe one word comments might get downvoted like yes, no, maybe.
I’ll have to try that some time.
Great text. I especially liked
Mad people wander about shouting at nobody.
There are a lot these here, too (and of the professional beggars as well).
Gloucester has always been a dump. It is my nearest city and I rarely go to the city centre to buy things because it is hopeless for shopping these days, as more and more useful retail outlets have vanished. The outlet centre and the quays are very popular though, and do have a good choice of restaurants, which are always busy. It is definitely an improvement on the formerly derelict warehouses, now brought back to life.
Like many cities, the most useful large retail stores are on the trading estates on the outskirts of the city, which I do use, and many people ignore Gloucester and Cheltenham and their parking problems and simply nip down the M5 to Cribbs Causeway, which is a massive shopping mall at Bristol.
So many people diss the Forest of Dean. I will stand up for it. It is how England used to be in many ways. If you want to live a relatively remote self sufficient lifestyle and not spend a total fortune on the property to do it, it’s the place. It’s remoteness makes it special, there’s not may places like it left in the southern half of England.
We live just across the river from the forest, I have a clear view of Cinderford. We had been living here 20 years when someone asked us how we were settling in! I have friends who have lived hereabouts for 40 years and are still considered outsiders. The Severn might separate us, but the mindset is the same.
‘Edward II … was murdered by having a red-hot poker shoved up his backside.’
Canard! No contemporaraneous evidence exists exists for this hackneyed legend. And no one appears to have mentioned Edward II’s homosexuality until 200 years after he was dead.
Ah, but you can still hear his screams in Berkeley Castle….even if not true it’s guaranteed a story to make you wince!
Never been to Gloucester, but the Forest of Dean is fab.
If you go, do make a point of visiting Littledean Jail (a private “museum” which is gloriously un-PC).
The snobbish, “liberal” Establishment would have a fit of the vapours if they dared set foot through the doors.
https://www.littledeanjail.com/
Bristol is largely the same. The reason the city centre is dead, it is that the car is largely banned. Car parking, not much and sky high price. Public transport, unreliable. Bus lanes everywhere but no buses. Cycle lanes everywhere but very few cycles. Many boarded up shops because rents and Council tax far too high. High rents and tax need high footfall, but it simply isn’t there. Even M&S closed down! Take note Councils, you are economically plain stupid! Labour of course, although we now have some Greens to make it worse.
Glasgow city centre is equally depressing, and I very rarely venture in. The three famous shopping streets have had the life torn out of them, there used to be fabulous department stores, now all gone, even the first M & S has gone, the many shoe shops, boutiques selling original designs, tailors, night clubs, lovely restaurants. As others have said it’s filthy, rubbish everywhere, immigrants filling many of the city hotels, charity shops, beggars, drunks and junkies everywhere. There are areas within the city boundary that have been taken over by Muslim communities, Romanians, Albanians, and Pakistanis.
We also have a city centre ULEZ, which would deter even the most faithful shoppers and theatre goers, all run by the most useless SNP council. We live in the countryside now, and our small town of fewer than 4,000 souls has 1 co-op three corner shops, chemist, two pubs, and 6, yes 6 take away hot food outlets, two Chinese, 1 chippy, 2 curry and pizza combined, 1 tandoori, and one coffee shop/cafe. Sadly that’s where people seem to spend all their money, maybe no one can cook anymore.
Just the thought of an SNP-run council gave me even more shudders than the mention of a Labour/Green council.
This Comments tour of the UK is most depressing. I’ll say nothing of the struggling coastal town I live in.
I used to live in Gloucestershire 20 years ago and even then Gloucester wasn’t a city I was comfortable visiting, Goodness knows what it’s degenerated to now.
Feral kids on bikes exist in Reading, too. I prefer to refer to them as morons who’ll sooner or later end up getting hurt and will then hopefully collide with somebody else. It may have helped that an attempt to go all feral in the pedestrian zone drew a couple of pretty feral reaction from pedestrians roughly based on Do you know what unstable balance is? If not, are your sure you want to know this?
Around me is quite mixed:
Wokingham – recent facelift, quite pleasant
Bracknell – Used to be awful, but much improved following massive redevelopment
Reading – Not great
Camberley – Not great
Slough – Grim
Marlow – pleasant
Henley – pleasant
High Wycombe – Not far, not far enough
Guildford – Not too bad
Maidenhead – Not too bad, but declining
Could well be describing Coventry. Awful place with a beautiful cathedral and a largely non British population.
It’s a difficult one with Fred and Rose. Never been to Gloucester but I’ve heard similar stories about lots of places in England over the last few decades. Maybe it is impossible for you to leave the country. If you have children then encourage them to learn foreign languages and look at opportunities abroad. If you have the werewithal then get out soon because the longer you leave it the harder it will become for several reasons. Some countries are already forcing their citizens to pay a ‘leaving tax’ on their wealth. It isn’t impossible. I know readers of this page tend to be older and I lived in Malta for a couple of years and I met lots of elderly Brits who stayed stayed in Malta during the winter drawing their pension and they seemed to be having a great time. Just be aware that the deterioration in climate in the UK will be a big draw on your energy and you are well advised to get out while you can.